The white man dominates Africa. He takes pro-
duce and lives, very much as he chooses. The yield
of the earth for Europe and America. The yield of
men for Europe’s colonial armies” (95). Hughes’s
observations about the inequities perpetuated by
colonialism lead to additional musings about the
racial tensions that he experiences and witnesses
aboard the ship. He provides details about his ship-
mates, such as “Manuel, the Filipino boy from
Mindanao, who served the passengers.” He was an
earnest worker “because he was hoping they would
tip him well when the boat got to New York.
Manuel wanted to marry a Mexican girl,” Hughes
reveals, “and put a big payment down on new fur-
niture for their flat” (111). Hughes returns home
to Cleveland, Ohio, with a monkey named Jocko
that his mother, who refers to it as a “Congo devil,”
promptly sells to a local pet shop as soon as
Hughes makes plans to go again to sea. When his
firing by a racist steward inadvertently saves his life
because the ship is blown up by an undetected
mine in the Black Sea, Hughes celebrates and
takes advantage of his new opportunities to live in
France. He settles in Paris, makes friends with
young people like Mary, a woman with “soft, doe-
brown” skin who reads the CRISIS,is familiar with
his poems, and shares with him an appreciation for
CLAUDEMCKAY, “the Negro poet, in London” and
his volume SPRING INNEWHAMPSHIRE.The sec-
tion closes with anecdotes about his arrival in the
United States, his first encounters with members of
the Harlem Renaissance, and his relocation to
WASHINGTON, D.C. In “Washington Society,”
Hughes recalls that he “landed with a few poems,”
shared them with COUNTEECULLEN, gained access
to a NATIONALASSOCIATION FOR THEADVANCE-
MENT OFCOLOREDPEOPLEparty at the club owned
by Happy Rhone, and promptly found himself im-
mersed in conversations with such influential civil
rights and literary figures as WALTERWHITE, JAMES
WELDONJOHNSON, and CARLVANVECHTEN.
In “Black Renaissance,” the third and final
section of the autobiography, Hughes provides a
documentary overview of the Harlem Renais-
sance. He describes performances such as the mu-
sical revue Shuffle Along,considers the influence
of actors Charles Gilpin, Rose McClendon, PAUL
ROBESON, and others, and his own firsthand in-
teractions with writers while living in the room-
ing house that came to be known as “Niggerati
Manor” with Wallace Thurman. He also provides
scintillating assessments of figures like Thurman,
whom he describes as “a strangely brilliant black
boy, who had read everything, and whose critical
mind could find something wrong with everything
he read” and who “had read so many books be-
cause he could read eleven lines at a time. He
would get from the library a great pile of volumes
that would have taken me a year to read,” recalls
Hughes, “But he would go through them in less
than a week, and be able to discuss each one at
great length with anybody” (182). Hughes also
devoted several passages to accounts of decadent
and memorable social events ranging from the
annual Hamilton Club Lodge Ball, where “men
dress as women and women as men” (208) and
which he attended with heiress A’LELIAWALKER,
to the funeral of Florence Mills that included “a
beautiful procession, with the chorus girls from
her show marching all in gray, and an airplane re-
leasing flocks of blackbirds overhead” (209).
In his postscript to The Big Sea,Hughes con-
sidered once again the epigraph with which he
began the volume. “Literature is a big sea full of
many fish,” he writes. “I let down my nets and
pulled. I’m still pulling.” Hughes reaffirms his com-
mitment to life as a writer. “I would have to make
my own living again,” he decides, as the 1920s end
and, according to him, so too does the Harlem Re-
naissance. “I determined to make it writing. I did.
Shortly poetry became bread; prose, shelter and
raiment. Words turned into songs, plays scenarios,
articles, and stories” (250).Bibliography
Berry, Faith, ed. Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond
Harlem.Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Com-
pany, 1983.
McLaren, Joseph, ed. The Collected Works of Langston
Hughes. Vol. 13: Autobiography—The Big Sea.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.
Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes: I, Too,
Sing America.Vol. 1: 1902–1941.New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986.Billy Pierce Studio
A pioneering dance studio. Billy Pierce’s story was
the basis of ELMERA. CARTER’s May 1930 OPPOR-34 Billy Pierce Studio